


Let the world come rushing in

by EponineTheStrange (gallifreyandglowclouds)



Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-13
Updated: 2013-07-13
Packaged: 2017-12-19 07:50:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/881299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyandglowclouds/pseuds/EponineTheStrange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt notices that something is wrong with Karen. He decides to drop by her house, and then sees Patrick hurting her badly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let the world come rushing in

Karen is skittish. She wasn’t this skittish the last time Matt saw her,

This is the first thing that Matt notices when they come back for read-throughs for series six. Moff has this incredibly annoying habit of slamming his copy of the script down on the table in front of him when he decides it’s time for a break.

Karen never used to jump. But she nearly falls out of her seat with fear when a lunch break is signalled in this fashion.

“Kaz, you okay?” Matt asks her.

“Yeah,” she says with a nod that’s a shade too hasty to be truthful. She beetles out of the room, and he doesn’t see her until lunch break is over.

She dashes out of the read-through at the end of the day so quickly that Matt and Arthur scarcely have a chance to say goodbye. Since lunch, however, Matt has become convinced that there is something bad going on, and he resolves to catch up to her and try and figure out what’s going on.

“Kazza!” He yells, just catching her before she leaves the lobby of the BBC building. “Wait up!”

She does stop, but does not look happy. “What?”

“I was wondering if you wanted to come over and run lines,” he says, a bit out of breath but smiling. “You know, like old times. Eat some Pad See Yew.”

“Love to, but,” and she looks over her shoulder like she expects someone to be listening in on their conversation, “Patrick’s in town and I should probably, you know, hang out with my boyfriend.”

Matt’s feelings about Patrick aside (and he has a lot of them that fall squarely in the ‘you are not good enough for Karen’ vein) she’s kind of right, and he has ditched her in the past for Daisy.

“Well, I’ll see if Arthur’s up for it,” he says with a shrug, knowing full well that he’s going to get turned down there. “If you change your mind, you know where I am.”

Karen gives him a quick, polite nod, and walks out the door. 

* * *

 

Everyone has off days, and Matt is certainly no exception, but Karen seems to be going for a record number of off days in a row. Even Arthur and Alex are noticing it, and they always ask Matt what’s up because they assume that she tells him everything ever. In this case, all he can get out of her is a terse ‘I’m fine, Matt’.

He puts an arm on her shoulder one time when they’re off camera, because that’s part of the famous Smith-Gillan banter, and she winces. _Winces._

He knows that she isn’t going to magically let him in on whatever the hell is going on with her, so he offers to get her some ice. (She refuses.)

Matt comes up with various scenarios that are even remotely plausible, like Karen’s taken up cage fighting in her spare time, or has perhaps started cycling to work, and then, well, then there’s the one he doesn’t want to believe, but based on what he’s reading on the internet – that someone might be abusing her.

He doesn’t want to make Patrick the villain of the piece, because he spends a whole lot of time doing that, but he seems to be the logical culprit.

* * *

 

So, without any warning and when he knows that he will have a weekend sans Daisy but Patrick is coming down to stay with Karen, he decides to drop by the house she’s renting in Cardiff and see what’s up.

The blinds on the front window are open, so he can see pretty clearly what’s happening, and it looks like she and Patrick happen to be fighting in the living room at the front of the house. There’s a tree on the street that he can creepily hide behind and also see what’s happening through the window.

And then, when Matt is possibly least expecting it, Patrick winds up and punches Karen.

She recoils a bit from the blow, which pushes her back towards the wall, and trips over the cord for a lamp that Matt can’t see but knows is there. Patrick shoves her, and her head smacks back against a picture frame, and here is all the proof he needs that something is seriously wrong. (And he’s the one practically hiding in shrubbery spying on the situation.)

He pushes her to the ground and starts kicking her, and Matt is suddenly torn – he knows he needs to do something, but what? Patrick is two inches taller and several times stronger than he, so taking him on directly is probably a bad idea. So he grabs his mobile out of his pocket, and dials 999.

“Police, fire, or ambulance?” The operator asks.

“Police. Probably ambulance too.”

“What’s your emergency, sir?”

“There’s a domestic disturbance at – at 4 Church Street,” Matt says quietly. “Someone’s getting beat up by her boyfriend.”

“Alright, sir, we’ll send them as soon as we can. Can you tell me your name?”

Matt’s voice catches in his throat. “Um, I’m the Doctor.”

“What?”

“The Doctor. That’s my name.”

He hangs up his phone, and then goes and sits in the Starbucks on the corner of Karen’s streets until he hears ambulances and police cars come zipping around the corner. He pokes his head out to make sure that they stop in front of Karen’s flat, which they do, and then he heads back to his flat with a heavy heart and a heavier conscience.

* * *

He’s sitting on his couch staring at the wall when he gets a phone call. There had total silence in his flat before his phone started to buzz, and in his haste to answer he nearly knocks the little table by his couch over.

“Hello?”

“Matt, it’s me.”

“Kaz!” He doesn’t know what’s going to happen with this phone call, but he assumes that she’s either at the police station or at the hospital.

“Listen, I’m at the hospital and I need someone with me because I’m freaked out and things are just really bad,” she says.

“I’m on my way, Kaz,” he says, and as he gets up he does knock over the coffee table. 

* * *

He’s not really sure how he’s going to react when he sees her, because she probably doesn’t know that he was the one who made the 999 call in the first place, and based on how she’s been on set, she probably doesn’t want anyone knowing about what’s happening between her and Patrick. Matt knows he will have to tread a delicate line on this one.

There are one or two photographers lurking around the door of the hospital, so he puts on his sunglasses and covers his face. There’s a camera flash as he goes through the door.

Karen’s in A&E, and Matt has to keep himself from gasping when he sees her. He didn’t watch the whole time when Patrick was beating her, out of fear and a little bit of shame, but he really did a number on her. She’s got a black eye, and one of her cheeks looks a lot more swollen than it probably should. She’s wearing a hospital gown, and Matt can see that the nurses have bandaged up her stomach – probably, he thinks, because she’s fractured several ribs.

Matt doesn’t say anything, because she’s pretty focused on the nurse who is dealing with a cut on her arm. He sits down in the chair on the other side of  her bed and grabs her other hand.

“Hey,” he whispers.

“Hey,” Karen says, but she does not look at him.

“You want to talk about what happened?”

She shakes her head.

* * *

He takes her home that night at the insistence of the doctors, who tell her that she probably has a concussion and therefore needs someone to wake her up every couple of hours.

Karen grudgingly agrees. Some idiot pap must have passed along a message that both he and Karen were at the hospital, and as soon as they step out the door they are harassed by flashing cameras and recorders. He pulls an arm around Karen and pushes her through the throng and to his car.

She’s crying when she gets to the car, and she puts her head in her hands when she sits down. He doesn’t say anything as he fires up the ignition.

“I’ll talk to Moff and see if I can get those pictures taken down,” Matt says. “Moff knows people who knows people. No one will publish them, Kaz. I’ll do my best.”

She nods almost imperceptibly. 

* * *

“I can’t sleep in your bed, Matt,” Karen says, as he pulls the sheets off to put new ones on for her.

“It’s more comfortable than the couch,” Matt says.

“You’re sleeping on the couch.”

“This is because I have no guest room, and my best friend has broken ribs and is not going to sleep on my shitty couch,” he replies. “I can handle it for as long as you need to stay, Kaz. Gotta lighten up on the cage fighting, eh?”

She gives him a look of death and he reminds himself not to try and make any jokes lest he get murdered in his own living room.

“I’ve got various kinds of frozen fruit and vegetables that we can use to ice your ribs,” Matt says once he’s done making the bed. “Just yell if you need anything.”

“I think I’ll be fine, Matt,” Karen says. “Right now, I just need some sleep.”

“I’m going to set a timer for every two hours or so,” he says, looking up at her. “I’ll make sure you haven’t died on me in the night. I think I’ve got some of your clothes here, but we can go back to yours and get some tomorrow.”

Karen nods gratefully. “See you in the morning.”

He sleeps in a ratty t-shirt and boxers, and pulls a blanket over himself on the couch. He just remembers to punch the timer on his phone before he falls asleep.

* * *

When he wakes up to make sure that Karen’s still breathing, he walks in to his bedroom and finds her curled up on the bed, crying.

“Kaz,” he whipsers, urgently, because seeing her this broken frightens him. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

She sits up, and he sits down beside her on the bed. He gently drapes his arms around her, and lets her sob in to the crook of his neck.

* * *

Karen’s got this thousand-yard stare going on, and so Matt spends a lot of time tiptoeing around the flat. She writes him a list of things to get from her flat. She’s got no interest in going back there, and while he’s worried about leaving her alone, he kind of goes with it because that’s what she wants.

They’re watching the news mid-afternoon, and she’s holding her tea in front of her but not drinking it, when she looks over and says to Matt, “Patrick’s been a bit of a prick lately.”

Matt nods.

“He’s been mad lately,” Karen says. “Hasn’t been getting a lot of work with the photography business, so he spends a lot of time sitting around in my house.”

“You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to,” he says, muting the television.

She shakes her head. “I need to talk to someone about what’s been happening, because I’ve been holding it in for so long. He started just getting angry with me for no real reason, just blowing up. Then he started getting rough. Yesterday, he was mad because I had gone to work and wasn’t around to wait on his every command. And then he just fucking lost it – punching and kicking,” she pauses a bit, and wipes her eyes, “and I thought he was going to kill me, Matt. I really did. He didn’t, because someone, and I don’t know who, called the police. As far as I know he’s still in jail.”

“You going to press charges?” Matt asks.

Karen nods. “He’s not doing this to someone else.” She swallows, and says, “This is my fault, Matt.”

“No, god no,” Matt says, sounding a little angry. Karen instinctively recoils from him, even though he’s sitting in an armchair several feet away from where she is on the couch. “Sorry. But no, Karen, this is because Patrick is messed up and he’s got things to work out and all that. But this is not on you, Karen.”

“I should have done something.”

“You were scared. That makes sense, Kazza, and you can’t blame yourself for his bad behaviour.”

She shakes her head and wipes her eyes again. “This was never supposed to be how things were going to go for me.”

“That’s how a lot of people feel about life, I think,” Matt says, with a sad smile.

* * *

PIs parade through Matt’s flat throughout the week, getting information from Karen so that they can build a case against Patrick. He sits in his bedroom, so that he doesn’t disturb them, but peeks his head out and waves at Karen everyone once in a while. She waves back at times, which really confuses their visitors.

He drops her at the courthouse one day so that she can talk to the Crown Attorney. He wanders around downtown Cardiff, signing the odd autograph but not really doing anything in particular otherwise. When he gets a text from Karen telling him that she’s done, he dashes back, and when he gets there she’s leaning against the outside wall of the building.

“Let’s grab a coffee or something,” she says, and he nods, and notes with some happiness that the bruises on her face are starting to subside. “I need to get back in to the world.”

They make their way down the street, Matt’s hands jammed in his coat pockets.

“Good meeting?” he asks.

“Yeah, think I’m ready to see Patrick for the last time in court,” she says. She sighs, and then continues, “It’ll be over, and that will be good.”

Matt knows that she’ll always have the scars, both mental and physical, from her experience with Patrick, and he feels that it’s slightly unfair that she’s not going to get back all of what he’s taken from her. At least she’ll be able to move on, bit by bit.

“They were telling me about the person who called 999,” Karen says. “Didn’t leave their name.” She looks up at Matt somewhat purposefully, and then says, “He called himself the Doctor.”

“Well, this is Cardiff, Kaz,” Matt says, staring straight ahead. “Lots of odd people. I think you just got the one good person who happened to be walking down your street that day.”

“Of course,” she says, with a smile, and it sounds like she doesn’t fully believe him.

He briefly debates telling her about the 999 call and how he ended up hiding behind the tree outside of her house, but then smiles to himself and thinks, _oh, she knows._


End file.
